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Fun Word Friday: It’s a Jumble!

Posted by Emma on August 5, 2011 at 8:45 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes


An old drawing of an auroch.
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

aurochs: an extinct animal that was the ancestor of modern cattle.  The last ones died in the 1600s from the usual causes.  This is the singular and the plural, so it goes “one aurochs, two aurochs.”  Actually, it went more like “two aurochs, one aurochs, no aurochs.”

A picture of a binnacle.
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

binnacle: a tall case that protects a compass on a ship.  Very early binnacles were built using iron nails, which turned out to be a bit silly, since the iron interfered with the accuracy of the compass.  So you can imagine the problem created with the introduction of iron-clad ships.  But not to worry; good ol’ human ingenuity soon fixed this problem, and magnets were placed here and there within the binnacle housing to compensate.  They were even adjustable, just in case you were carrying a load of iron in your iron-clad ship.

A picture of a dolmen in Scotland.
(photo courtesy of stock.xchng)

dolmen: Well, I’ve tried to concisely describe a dolmen with text and have failed.  Take a couple big rocks, put them there, put another big rock on top as a sort of roof, and you’ve got the general idea of a dolmen.  Just look at the picture.  These thingies are generally 7,000 to 5,000 years old and were probably tombs.  Or maybe not.  Yeah, it’s all very sketchy.  Dolmens are found all over the world, though, so we can be sure that ancient people agreed about the all-around usefulness of a dolmen.

A dual and conflict, aka an internecine.
(photo courtesy of stock.xchng)

internecine: relating to conflict within a group; mutually destructive.  See “tontine.”

A picture of a person signing a contract.
(photo courtesy of stock.xchng)

tontine: a financial arrangement in which members contribute in equal amounts to a fund that is eventually claimed by the last surviving participant.  Or, to save time, you could just write “murder me” on your forehead.

Fun Word Friday: War

Posted by Emma on July 22, 2011 at 10:49 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

War of the Three Sanchos: a war between three kings of Spain who were first cousins.  (They shared a grandfather who was also named Sancho.)  The war took place between 1065 and 1067, hundreds of years before most large bookstores established baby-naming book sections.  The war was eventually won by Sancho.  Ha!  Apparently, the war reached a stalemate by 1067, but it was a violent period of history, and eventually all three Sanchos met violent deaths.

Long War: the Long War began in the 1590s was fought between the Hapsburgs of Austria and the Ottoman Empire.  This pitiful little skirmish of approximately 14 years was named the Long War despite occurring AFTER the Hundred Years’ War (total running time: 116 years).  Get over yourselves, Hapsburgs and Ottomans.

Peach Tree War: Interested parties: Susquehannock Indians versus the Dutch colony of New Netherland.  Year: 1655.  Duration: One battle. (One of your shorter wars.)  Apparently, the Dutch have nobody to blame but themselves, because not only did one of them allegedly kill a young Native American woman for stealing a peach, but they also tried to steal Swedish colonial lands while the Swedes weren’t looking.  (The Susquehannock were allied with the Swedes, who probably believed in free peaches for everyone.)

Honey War: The Honey War was the best kind of war: the kind with no casualties.  Nobody’s willing to die when the prize is nothing but Iowa.  (Yes, this is about Iowa, but please keep reading!)  The Honey War occurred in the 1830s and involved a border dispute with Missouri.  Being in Iowa, the war involved people being chased with pitchforks, payment in honey, and trees being cut down in an extremely angry manner.  Nobody cares who won.

Pastry War: An invasion of Mexico by the French in 1838.  This war, like many wars, began with arguments over money and pastries.  A French pastry chef in Mexico got all upset over his ruined pastries, the French government demanded pastry restitution, Mexico refused to pay that or the millions of dollars it already owed the French, and finally the French got fed up and captured Mexico’s entire navy.  Now the Mexicans had no navy AND no fine French pastries.  Things weren’t looking good.  They eventually agreed to pay the pastry restitution section of the bill.

Our Top 5 Favorite Blogs

Posted by Emma on July 13, 2011 at 9:16 am. Captioning, Movies, Subtitling

There are so many amazing blogs about living with disabilities. Here are 5 on our ‘need to read’ list. Do you have any favorites?Thank you to everyone who have shares their story.

1. CaptionFish

This is a directory/search engine for captioned movies nationwide. There is nothing like it on the internet! Just type in your zipcode and find the nearest movie theater that displays closed captions! It’s a snap.

2. Speak Up Librarian

Read stories about deaf living by a hard of hearing librarian attempting to find her way in the world as a deafened adult. Her stories revolve around her everyday experiences. She talks about the latest TV trends, watching closed captioned movies in a theater, and issues around communication. She has a great voice!

3. BrailleWorks Blog

This blog has a wide range of articles about the need for braille, social networks for blind families, new technology, movie reviews, and parent resources. There are also current event updates.

4. Great Things About Being Blind!

This blog contains enlightening and uplifting stories about being blind. It was started in January 2011 to add a new voice to the disability community.

5. Hearing Your Voice

This blog has news, updates, and stories about being deaf & hard of hearing.

Fun Word Friday: Revolution!

Posted by Emma on July 8, 2011 at 9:37 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

Happy July! In honor of the recently departed 4th of July and the quickly upcoming Bastille Day, we’re bringing waving the red, white, and blue flags in our minds and learning some revolution-related terms.

broadsides/broadsheets: large sheets of paper printed vertically and often used as posters or as pages in newspapers or magazines.  On July 4, 1776, hundreds of copies of the new Declaration of Independence were printed by a man named Dunlap and cleverly called Dunlap broadsides.

cockade: a circular decoration of ribbons usually worn on a hat and whose colors indicate an allegiance.  Because of ribbonosity, the colors are often displayed in concentric rings, which sounds very nice in theory, but if you Google “French Revolution cockade” and see a picture of actor Sam Neill in costume, you’ll quickly decide that wearing a large bull’s-eye on one’s head during a revolution isn’t perhaps the best idea.

flying camp: a small, mobile reserve of troops, particularly the ones organized by the Americans during the Revolutionary War.  A lot of the soldiers who joined were probably very disappointed to learn that the alleged “flying” actually involved walking really fast and that there were almost no s’mores whatsoever.

real tennis: The French signed the Tennis Court Oath in the early days of the revolution, but the “tennis” in question is not the tennis of today.  Today’s tennis is also known as “lawn tennis,” and it is derived from an older game that was originally called “tennis” but then, after those cocky upstarts introduced the new version, changed its name to “real tennis,” which I think really conveys its attitude toward its successor.  Real tennis is played indoors, and bouncing the balls off the walls is a part of the game, so you really needed to watch your back if you were a real tennis player (or someone whose name ended in “the Sixteenth”).

seigneurial: of a seigneur, a man of high position, especially a feudal lord.  “Dudes, I’m totally going to use this sweet broadside poster to advertise my seigneurial real tennis court.”

Is FCPX Right for CaptionMax?

Posted by Emma on July 6, 2011 at 8:44 am. Captioning, Subtitling, Techy

by Emily Bell
Multimedia Manager

MacBook Pro with FCPX Software
(credit: Apple)

So, we probably won’t be “upgrading” (is crossgrading a word?) to Final Cut X anytime soon. While we offer many file-based workflows already, we also do a lot of work with the broadcast TV market, and for us, Final Cut Pro is integrated into our technical operations center along with our video servers, routers, and high-def and standard-def tape decks. For the time being, we will continue to use Final Cut Pro 7 to provide tape capture and tape transfer services to our clients and to access your finished projects in our archives.

This is kinda how we feel about FCPX. Take it away Team Coco.
(There are no captions or description since we are using a clip from the Team Coco website.)

We also love DVD Studio Pro too much to say good-bye, since our authors know all of the scripting secrets to make really cool DVDs with it.

We will be doing some testing with the new software, however, to see how our subtitle and closed caption files import and whether our software nerd needs to make any tweaks. If you are a current client who already made the switch to FCP X, please let your project manager know when you set up your next job with us so we can be sure to send you the right file!

Fun Word Friday: An Aleatoric Arrangement

Posted by Emma on June 24, 2011 at 8:33 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

zeugma: the use of a word to govern two or more words or phrases; a Greek word meaning “yoke”  Example: “He took his coat and his leave.”  People who use zeugmas in their speech are very clever, so you’re going to want to remember this term and be all, “Oh, good use of a zeugma” if you want to impress them back and be regarded as a worthy conversational rival.

aposematism: a warning signal, such as coloration, possessed by a harmful living organism to deter predators.  It’s all very well and good for a poison dart frog to kill the predator that eats it, but how much better would it be if the predator knew ahead of time, due to bright coloration, that the frog was poisonous and could therefore avoid it?  Good for the predator.  Good for the frog.  Not so good for the next dull brown frog the predator encounters, but we can’t all be winners.

gueridon: a small, ornate table.  And that’s about all there is to say about that.

phugoid: motion of an airplane in which it pitches up while decreasing speed and pitches down while accelerating.  Speaking of airplanes, did you know they display aposematism?  See their sparkly and noticeable ascent into the air?  That’s a sign you shouldn’t get on one.

aleatoric: random, happening by chance.  Once again, I display massive skill in writing this column, because although these words seem to be disconnected and random, they are an aleatoric arrangement and thus perfectly showcase my final term, aleatoric. I totally planned that.

A Call for Quality Captions

Posted by Emma on June 15, 2011 at 8:39 am. Captioning, Consumer Advisory Board, Subtitling

CaptionMax has a dedicated Consumer Advisory Board with experts in all kinds of accessibility. As guest bloggers, we ask our board members to share their accessibility stories or voice their concerns.

by Carl Jensema, Ph.D.

Photo of a guitar with captions "lively guitar music"

Tonight my wife and I sat down to watch Country Strong.

I don’t know who captioned it but they gave a textbook example of how not to do it.  The whole movie is about music, but NONE of the music was captioned.  The dialog was captioned and then when someone started singing there would be no captions at all for several minutes until the song was over.  Extremely frustrating.  I stopped watching the movie.

We’ve had captioning since 1980 and some caption companies still haven’t figured out how to do it!

(more…)

Fun Word Friday: List ‘o Words

Posted by Emma on June 10, 2011 at 8:22 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

At first glance, it may seem that these words have nothing in common and that I threw them together without bothering to come up with a theme.  But that accusation just doesn’t hold H2O.  There’s a special bond between these words, a bond as special as Mr. 007.  (You’re going to understand these terrible jokes in a minute.)  I hereby present several interesting words all linked by the very significant and meaningful fact of having two Os.

Barracoon: a temporary barracks used to contain slaves or prisoners.

Moon gate: a circular opening in a wall, used in Chinese architecture.  You don’t want to put one of these in your barracoon, however aesthetically tempting it may be, because your slaves and/or convicts will run right out.

Gobo: (shortened from “goes before optics”) a device placed in front of a light source to control the shape, color, or strength of the light stream.  If your prisoners are really mean guys, what would be really funny is to use a gobo like to make it look like there’s a moon gate in the wall and watch them run into it.  Ha ha!

Cocotte: a small baking dish with one or two handles.  (Or a prostitute.  Hopefully, context will help you determine which of the two is meant.)  On the other hand, if your prisoner is a friend that you’re holding for his or her own good, it would be a nice gesture to serve your friend a delicious hotdish in a cocette.

Hooligan firm: a group of people who really like their soccer team and who have decided that this warrants acts of vandalism and assault against other teams’ property and supporters.  “Hooligan firm” is a pretty silly name for something violent, but fortunately each group has given itself a fierce-sounding name to instill fear in the hearts of the opposition.  Examples: City Service Firm, The Naughty Forty, Newcastle Gremlins, Baby Squad, The Ointment.  Well, they’re English; even the criminals show a little restraint.

Tech Time: Start of Program vs. Start of Video

Posted by Emma on June 8, 2011 at 8:39 am. Captioning, Techy

Are you just starting out the video world? Did you know that there can be a difference between the “start of program” and the “start of video”? That difference can be very important to your caption timing!

The Start of Video is the first frame of the video file.

The Start of Program means the first frame of the actual show itself. There could be some packaging (10 seconds of black and bars/tone) before the of the start of the program.  For broadcast video, this frame is usually 01:00:00;00.

When it matters:
1.  Master tape: When sending us a master tape, we will use the start of the program to time our captions or subtitles. Normally a tape will have that extra packaging, so the start of the video won’t actually be that important to us.

2. Web files: When you send us a .mov, .wvm, .flv, .mp4 (etc.) for web captioning, the start of the video is important. We time our captions to with the start of the video because there is no timecode to read and the start of the video becomes our anchor point for all caption timing.

Happy timing!

Captions and YouTube

Posted by Emma on June 1, 2011 at 8:47 am. Captioning, Techy, YouTube

Now you have a fancy YouTube page and you’ve gone to all the work to add captions. How can you make sure that they’re easy to find?

It’s easy, you can force the captions on. This is our option of choice on our CaptionMax YouTube page. It’s easy to do and worry free!

Playback Setup
*This tip only applies to your own personal, or corporate, YouTube page.

- Log-in to your account. Navigate to your Account Settings page.
- Select the Playback Setup. This is the menu allows you to adjust your video playback settings, adjust captions, and adjust annotations.

Graphic of the Account Settings Page. Naviate to the Playback Setup section.

This option will ensure that whenever captions are present on your videos, they will automatically default to ‘on.’ After all, you’ve done all that work, you might as well show it off!


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